Tuesday, December 18, 2012

Time for Obama's court Jew to speak out against Hagel (UPDATED)

For someone who got Chuck Hagel so right in 2007 - in a post that was disappeared down the memory hole, but may still be found via the Way Back Machine - Ira Forman's silence is deafening. Forman, chair of the National Jewish Democratic Council and most recently the Obama campaign's liaison to the Jewish community, had this to say about Hagel in March 2007.

As Senator Hagel sits around for six more months and tries to decide
whether to launch a futile bid for the White House, he has a lot of
questions to answer about his commitment to Israel. Consider this:

- In August 2006, Hagel was one of only 12 Senators who refused to write the EU asking them to declare Hezbollah a terrorist organization.
- In October 2000, Hagel was one of only 4 Senators who refused to sign a Senate letter in support of Israel.
- In November 2001, Hagel was one of only 11 Senators who refsued to
sign a letter urging President Bush not to meet with the late Yassir
Arafat until his forces ended the violence against Israel.
- In December 2005, Hagel was one of only 27 who refused to sign a
letter to President Bush to pressure the Palestinian Authroity to ban
terrorist groups from participating in Palestinian legislative
elections.
- In June 2004, Hagel refused to sign a letter urging President Bush to highlight Iran's nuclear program at the G-8 summit.

In 2009, when Hagel was appointed to be co-chair of President Obama's National Intelligence Advisory Board, Forman had this to say:

Back in 2009, when President Obama appointed Hagel to co-chair the
President's National Intelligence Advisory Board, the NJDC's then
executive director, Ira Forman, reserved criticism, as The Weekly
Standard reported at the time.

"Anybody who's looking for purity from us is going to be
disappointed," he said, after apparently being pressed to criticize
Hagel's appointment. Forman at the time also suggested that the RJC was
engaging in selective criticism and hadn't been so exercised about Hagel
until the former Republican senator was embraced by Obama.

But Forman (who since went on to be the 2012 Obama campaign’s Jewish
outreach coordinator) added: "If [Hagel] was taking a policy role, we'd
have real concerns."

Secretary of Defense sure sounds like a 'policy role' to me. But last week, Forman refused to comment when contacted by the Daily Beast's Eli Lake.

Prejudice—like cooking, wine-tasting and other consummations—has an
olfactory element. When Chuck Hagel, the former GOP senator from
Nebraska who is now a front-runner to be the next secretary of Defense,
carries on about how "the Jewish lobby intimidates a lot of people up
here," the odor is especially ripe.

Ripe because a "Jewish lobby," as far as I'm aware, doesn't exist. No
lesser authorities on the subject than John Mearsheimer and Stephen
Walt, authors of "The Israel Lobby," have insisted the term Jewish lobby
is "inaccurate and misleading, both because the [Israel] lobby includes
non-Jews like Christian Zionists and because many Jewish Americans do
not support the hard-line policies favored by its most powerful
elements."

Ripe because, whatever other political pressures Mr. Hagel might have
had to endure during his years representing the Cornhusker state,
winning over the state's Jewish voters—there are an estimated 6,100
Jewish Nebraskans in a state of 1.8 million people—was probably not a
major political concern for Mr. Hagel compared to, say, the ethanol
lobby.

Ripe because the word "intimidates" ascribes to the so-called Jewish
lobby powers that are at once vast, invisible and malevolent; and
because it suggests that legislators who adopt positions friendly to
that lobby are doing so not from political conviction but out of
personal fear. Just what does that Jewish Lobby have on them?

Ripe, finally, because Mr. Hagel's Jewish lobby remark was well in
keeping with the broader pattern of his thinking. "I'm a United States
Senator, not an Israeli Senator," Mr. Hagel told retired U.S. diplomat
Aaron David Miller in 2006. "I'm a United States Senator. I support
Israel. But my first interest is I take an oath of office to the
Constitution of the United States. Not to a president. Not a party. Not
to Israel. If I go run for Senate in Israel, I'll do that."

Read these staccato utterances again to better appreciate their
insipid and insinuating qualities, all combining to cast the usual slur
on Jewish-Americans: Dual loyalty. Nobody questions Mr. Hagel's loyalty.
He is only making those assertions to question the loyalty of others.

When someone in as prominent a position as Hagel is making those kinds of assertions against American Jewry, it's time for the American Jewish leadership to circle the wagons and fight back. And yet, Ira Forman is hiding in the brush along the side of the road (as, admittedly, are many others who find anti-Semitism in every pro-Israel pronouncement of a Christian Zionist - I looked in vain for a statement about Hagel from Abe Foxman over the last month).

“Chuck Hagel would not be the first, second, or third choice for the
American Jewish community’s friends of Israel. His record relating to
Israel and the U.S.-Israel relationship is, at best, disturbing, and at
worst, very troubling. The sentiments he’s expressed about the Jewish
lobby border on anti-Semitism in the genre of professors John
Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt and former president Jimmy Carter.”

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About Me

I am an Orthodox Jew - some would even call me 'ultra-Orthodox.' Born in Boston, I was a corporate and securities attorney in New York City for seven years before making aliya to Israel in 1991 (I don't look it but I really am that old :-). I have been happily married to the same woman for thirty-five years, and we have eight children (bli ayin hara) ranging in age from 12 to 33 years and eight grandchildren. Three of our children are married! Before I started blogging I was a heavy contributor on a number of email lists and ran an email list called the Matzav from 2000-2004. You can contact me at: IsraelMatzav at gmail dot com